14 DAY TRIAL // Since NVIDIA intends to release the GeForce GTX 750/750X graphics card(s) this month, Advanced Micro Devices has apparently decided to preempt that move by releasing a board of its own.
The card in question is called Radeon R7 250X and is a gap filler, which means that it sits, price-wise, between the R7 250 and R7 260.
Don't be fooled though. This is in no way an early preview of a next-generation graphics processing units architecture.
While NVIDIA will launch the GTX 750/750X as a way to introduce the next-generation Maxwell GPU core, the R7 250 is simply a rebranded Radeon 7770 GHz Edition, with the same number of stream processors (640) and 128-bit memory interface.
Speaking of which, the specifications of the new graphics card from Advanced Micro Devices are as follows.
The GCN 1.0 based Cape Verde GPU features 640 stream processors, as we’ve said before, as well as 40 texture mapping units (TMUs/TUs) and 16 raster operating units (ROPs).
Its core clock is of 1 GHz, and there doesn't seem to be any dynamic boosting technology, so the frequency will never automatically go higher than that (probably because the 7770 GHz edition was already overclocked to begin with).
Meanwhile, the 128-bit interface communicates with 1 GB or 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM whose clock is of 4.5 GHz.
For those who want a comparison, the $89 / €89 Radeon R7 250 has 384 SPs, 24 TUs and 8 ROPs, though oddly enough, the 1 GB of VRAM works a bit faster, at 4.6 Ghz, and there is dynamic overclocking for the GPU, to 1050 MHz.
Also, the R7 260 has 768/48/16 Sps/TUs/ROPs and clocks of 1 GHz and 6 GHz, respectively (again 128-bit interface). Being based on GCN 1.1 Bonaire architecture makes it inherently better. Its price is $109 / €109.
The AMD Radeon R7 250X has a price of $99 / €99 and should start selling soon, if it hasn't already.